Corporal Sam and Other Stories eBook

The assault had failed. At the foot of the breach
a soldier of the 4th Regiment, mad with rage, foamed
out a curse upon the Royals. Corporal Sam lifted
his bleeding fist and struck him across the mouth.
The sergeant dragged the two apart, slipped an arm
under his comrade’s, and led him away as one
leads a child. A moment later the surge of the
retreating crowd had almost carried them off their
feet. But the sergeant kept a tight hold, and
steered his friend back every yard of the way along
the bullet-swept foreshore. They were less than
half-way across when the dawn broke; and looking in
his face he saw that the lad was crying silently—­the
powder-grime on his cheeks streaked and channelled
with tears.

CHAPTER III.

‘I don’t understand ye, lad,’ said
Sergeant Wilkes.

‘Fast enough you’d understand, if you’d
but look me in the face,’ answered Corporal
Sam, digging his heel into the sand.

The two men lay supine on a cushion of coarse grass;
the sergeant smoking and staring up at the sky, the
corporal, with his sound hand clasping his wounded
one behind his head, his gaze fixed gloomily between
his knees and across the dunes, on the still unrepaired
breach in San Sebastian.

A whole fortnight had dragged by since the assault:
a fortnight of idleness for the troops, embittered
almost intolerably by a sense that the Fifth Division
had disgraced itself. One regiment blamed another,
and all conspired to curse the artillery—­whose
practice, by the way, had been brilliant throughout
the siege. Nor did the gunners fail to retort;
but they were in luckier case, being kept busy all
the while, first in shifting their batteries and removing
their worst guns to the ships, next in hauling and
placing the new train that arrived piecemeal from
England; and not only busy, but alert, on the watch
against sorties. Also, and although the error
of cannonading the columns of assault had never been
cleared up, the brunt of Wellington’s displeasure
had fallen on the stormers. The Marquis ever
laid stress on his infantry, whether to use them or
blame them; and when he found occasion to blame, he
had words—­and methods—­that scarified
equally the general of division and the private soldier.

‘Fast enough you understand,’ repeated
Corporal Sam savagely.

‘I do, then, and I don’t,’ admitted
Sergeant Wilkes, after a pause. The lad puzzled
him; gave him few confidences, asked for none at all,
and certainly was no cheerful companion; and yet during
these days of humiliation the two had become friends,
almost inseparable. ‘I’ve read it,’
the sergeant pursued, ’in Scripture or somewhere,
that a man what keeps a hold on himself does better
than if he took a city. I don’t say as
I understand that altogether; but it sounds
right.’

‘Plucky lot of cities we take, in the Royals,’
growled Corporal Sam. He nodded, as well as his
posture allowed, towards San Sebastian. ‘And
you call that a third-class fortress!’